Accelerator Controls Web / User Experience Developer Industrial Placement

at  Science and Technology Facilities Council STFC

SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY FACILITIES COUNCIL

Salary: £23,328 per annum
Hours: Full time
Contract Type: Fixed Term (12 months)
Location: Science and Technology Facilities Council, Rutherford Appleton Laboratory Harwell, Oxfordshire
Closing date: 20th October 2024
Interview date: December 2024/January 2025 (Virtual)
Start date: September 2025

The Controls Team at ISIS supports the operators in our main control room in monitoring and controlling the ISIS accelerators. We also provide similar support to the engineers who build and maintain the hardware that allows ISIS to operate.
We are currently moving from our old control system to a new open-source control system called EPICS which is used at many other particle accelerator facilities around the world. In the EPICS control system each item to be monitored and controlled (from the voltage of a steering magnet to whether a coolant water valve should be open or closed) has to have a unique identifier known as a PV. These PVs may then be used to create control user interfaces or screens in software called Phoebus. The current control system has over 800 screens so there is lots of work ahead in converting them to new Phoebus screens.
We have two connected web development projects for an industrial placement student to undertake to based on this.
The naming of the PVs needs to follow rigid rules. Names must be unique so that the wrong device is not controlled. But names must follow the rules so that the correct measurement or control may be quickly and accurately identified. Web based tools are used at other accelerators to guide engineers when naming their PVs and your task would be to prototype and deploy such a web-based tool here.
One of our team has developed a prototype system to automatically create control screens from a list of PVs. This allows our engineers to rapidly test and commission new equipment. This web-based tool could be improved further to generate more sophisticated screens. Additionally, based on the PV rules above, it could be possible to automatically generate more advanced screens to monitor whole areas of the accelerators at once. You would work to expand our existing prototype to implement these capabilities.